A/N: Forget what this one was for, but I just found it.
Rating: R
Reminiscent
If her mind has no concrete memory of him then her body knows him. Nothing about his touch is unfamiliar. When his fingers move, she knows their destination, the depth and pressure they will apply upon reaching it. She knows the feel of his slick hair sliding through her fingertips, the warmth of his neck beneath them.
He is kind, if all-consuming. He explains her illness repeatedly, patiently attentive to her ceaseless questioning. Why does she live here, in this lonely place? Where does he go when he leaves? Why doesn't she remember who he is, who she is?
Her illness taxes him, she imagines. A hint of sadness parallels his explanations when he speaks of her previous life. The Time she sometimes remembers, before her insidious illness took root. He explains it to her again and again. A dangerous virus lives within her. It whispers to her about things that are not real. Before he knew about it, she even tried to cut out her own palm looking for something only present in that false Time of the virus. She stares at her palm. Sometimes it itches from deep inside, but she doesn't recall the events of which he speaks.
His doctors work tirelessly to find a cure. Until then, she remains in these rooms with their stunning view of the moving stars and he tends to her when he is able.
She sees things that aren't real. Faces, tinny horns, klaxons. Red trickles marring faint blue symbols. Gleaming sectioned metal, maneuvering deftly through the black charcoal of space. Fire, sweat, fatigue. Hunger. He sees it in her eyes and she knows that it is dangerous. For her and whom else?
He says her name and then she sees him on her ship, standing in the middle of her bridge. He betrayed her. She's certain of it now.
"You…" Her vision tunnels. Words won't come. Only anger, a pooling purpose that takes time to gather within her veins.
He touches gleaming metal, speaks a name, one word that she once knew and yet sounds so foreign and then they are taking her away, away from these rooms that are all she knows and a wisp of memory ensnares her senses, grabbing her by the throat. And she would kill him when she remembers his people sitting where hers should have been.
She tries to, all the way down long, gleaming halls and past strong metal doors, until a tangle of heaving leather bodies pin her to a hard surface and a cool circle finds her hot jugular and artificial calm sweeps through her. Her muscles relax, traitorously pleasant plasma. She fights until she sleeps but the image taking her to slumber isn't the memory of betrayal, deceit or even defeat. No, it's the ghosted smile of enjoyment on his face when she'd first lunged at him.
He'd missed her. The real her.
She has no memory of anything but him. The walls of the spacious chambers seem confining at first, then safer as time drones on. Sometimes she recalls wine that doesn't burn bitter at the tip of her tongue in the dregs. Sometimes she doesn't. She floats beneath surface calm that is tamping a raging internal chaos. Normal to the disease, he assures her on the rare instances pride allows verbal acknowledgment of her distress. The pride she comes by honestly, he chuckles. The currents carrying his mirth seem to bring winds of that other Time, the one that didn't exist but it's somehow more real than the viewport her hands clutch so desperately each morning as she scans strange stars for meaning.
The music he plays haunts her, but she chases that feeling, listening to the same song over and over until she needs it to breathe, and sometimes, she truly does. When it stops, her heart needs reminding to beat.
The notes are sustaining. Haunting. Beckoning. Sometimes he watches her make a meal of the melody, digesting, savoring each note. Something about her face makes him reach out to stroke her temple, and his cool leather fingers evoke something else in her entirely.
When he's there she feels conflicting things. Joy at the connection, familiarity, resentment of the same. Trust and distrust, desire and guilt inexplicable.
He has full lips, such commanding tone. Every movement is surety, swift certainty. Despite the opulence of her surroundings, there is nothing half as mesmerizing as he. Dark eyes spill with hunger down her tunic. When her clothing shifts against her hyper-aware body, the flesh between her thighs burns for his gloves to follow his gaze down her tunic and make her forget the demons conjured by her condition. He does that better than anyone.
The servants tell him of her movements. She distrusts that, and she's not sure why. It makes sense that someone in her condition must be watched, carefully tracked for instability. She has no memory of privacy, only…the expectation is there. It lingers beneath the surface and she resents its violation.
He hurt her once. She's growing sure of it. Wine flows freely into her cup and when he carries her to their bed. She's starting to resent him, and she isn't even sure why. Her fingers tangle in his hair, yanking, hard. His leather fingers clamp on her hips in retaliation, his hips bucking and that hiss of pain from her grip is the most sensual sound of victory and fury that resonates in her now-fragile bones.
Hollow bones. Bones without marrow support her softening frame and she used to have muscle, she thinks she didn't have quite this curvature as her legs hook over his waist to cage him to her alone. Whatever she had or has, he likes it, always raging rock hard when they land here in her luxurious bed.
He's looking for something when his eyes bore into hers, something dangerous; this she has known for some time. Dangerous for whom?
She's starting to think it isn't her.